The Specters of Decadence in Later Nordic Literature

Abstract

Looking at the variety of Nordic literary decadence has provided us with a perspective that illuminates many tendencies in Nordic literature, extending well beyond the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Nordic fin de siècle decadence was never an openly proclaimed or critically accepted school or movement, its afterlife in the twentieth century has to be reconstructed from the literary texts rather than critical reactions. 1 Many of the authors discussed in this volume continued their careers while moving away from core decadence and its late satirical and Nietzschean variants toward neonaturalism, nationalism and high modernism. They often retained their antimodern attitudes, melancholy pessimism and elements of the decadent poetics that they developed in their moves toward modernist perspectivism. Some of them, like Joel Lehtonen, satirized their former decadent stances, but maintained a satirical antimodernity and an essentially decadent sensibility. The wide constellation of decadence we have analyzed helps in understanding these reactions and the further development of Nordic literatures under the aegis of decadence as it has been broadly understood.

Picturing Melancholia in Estonian Decadent Art

“…100 These associations have been particularly strong since WWI because of the yellow of mustard gas (or in fact sulphur mustard). 101 Because of its notoriety yellow became even the symbolic colour of decadence at the turn of the 20 th century. 102 The other symbolic colour of decadence was green because of its association with absinth, 103 which may, depending on its ingredients, also be greenish yellow.…”